Broadcast News

• 18th February 2010 • Blog Post by Seb Patrick •

Well, not “news”. Sorry to get your hopes up. But there wasn’t a film called “Broadcast Speculation” so it didn’t really work as a punning headline.

Anyway. The cover of the next issue of Doctor Who And The Monthly Celebratory Funtime Pamphlet has hit the internets, and despite the lack of solicitation copy (so far), with Smith and Gillan on the cover, noted Flatmate Of The Site Julian Hazeldine (who is, unlike myself, the sort of person who thinks about this sort of thing) has speculated that this could be the “first few eps preview” edition. Even though it wasn’t touted as such in last issue’s “next issue” box.

Indeed, the absence of such touting had led to pessimism on the Hazeldine-o-Meter that Series Fnarg wouldn’t get underway until early April; because it’s The Law that episodes have to be previewed by DWM, and if they’re not previewed in the issue hitting stands in early March, it’d have to be the one hitting stands in early April instead. So we were expecting that Easter Weekend would be at best the first time we’d see Matt Smith roll out of the TARDIS doors. However, if this is the preview issue, then that all changes – but given that nothing was mentioned in issue 418, one can’t help but wonder if there’s been a late change of heart, with the start date brought forward from whatever was originally planned. It certainly seems to be the established form in Who-land to keep everyone guessing about the transmission date until pretty darned close to the fact.

Obviously it’ll be much easier to get a handle on this once the actual solicitation copy for the issue is released – but for the moment, we could even be looking at seeing “The Eleventh Hour” within six weeks from now. Excited yet?

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

6 Responses

It’s entirely possible, of course, that the broadcast date was completely unknown until recently, hence the lack of preview about the previews. If you see what I mean. Although if we *were* getting full blown previews you’d think it’d be a bit clearer on the cover.

There’s also the possibility that they’re not doing previews in the traditional sense for the first few episodes, to let people go into the first episode with fresh, untainted eyes.

I guess there is no reason why the Moff would do the episode previews as RTD did, so it is possible that we could see the first episode sometime in March, especially as the trailer is being broadcast this Saturday, but I still reckon it is more than likely to be Easter weekend that we first see Smith.

Yeah, even without Patrick Stewart and Simon Callow (who were in it with Sir Ian when I saw it), it’ll still be a fantastic show. McKellen is indeed, of course, stunning. But possibly even better is Ronald Pickup…